Motivation

There are several factors affecting the visual distinctness of ui-elements - which ot-boomer does address:

• With growing screen resolutions the window title bar and the including minimize/maximize/close button are visually getting smaller and are harder to use.
• Most current themes do not offer to adjust / increase the window title bar and -button icons.
• The visual feedback of minimize/maximize/close -button while hovering above them is limited.
• With many themes it's hard to spot the active window, as there are often only minimal differences between the active vs inactive windows. The "modern" flat design of current themes makes it makes harder to spot the borders of overlapping windows.
• With increasing screen-resolutions it will be harder to grab a window border for resizing. If windows overlap, one will more often click onto a lower window and activate it instead.

Remarks

ot-boomer is meant to be used with a cinnamon DE of linux mint 19.3, 20 or LMDE4 (based on ubuntu or debian respectively) only. Accordingly does ot-boomer test on startup the used desktop environment and denies running, if not being used at an expected setup.

There is no need to install or run any additional software to use the modifications afterwards, as ot-boomer does "only" adjust system-settings (which are not accessible using the regular gui-tools).

Although the panel-setting are reachable using the regular cinnamon gui, ot-boomer does offer related options in a more compact way (almost only to have related settings in one place).

On first run ot-boomer will save a copy of current system-values at ot-boomer-original.config Besides the binary version an additional human readable file ot-boomer-original.dump is created (for information purposes).

ot-boomer-original.config can be used to restore the original values via the command line if ever needed. Details about available command line options can be found at: command line options

run ot-boomer

To run ot-boomer without keeping a permanent version of it, just use:

python3 <(wget https://www.orcus.de/Entities/linux/ot-boomer.py -O - 2>/dev/null)

If you prefer, to keep a copy of ot-boomer use:

mkdir ~/bin
cd ~/bin
wget https://www.orcus.de/Entities/linux/ot-boomer.py --backups=1
chmod +x ot-boomer.py
./ot-boomer.py

Note: Many linux distributions will integrate ~/bin to your $PATH environment variable (on the next login/reboot).

Basic steps

To adjust most relevant settings, do :

• tab "themes" - Add orcus themes
• tab "window frame setup"
• • select Preferred theme
  • select Titlebar font size
  • adjust Sizing area == the outside distance of the mouse cursor to switch to sizing-mode
• tab "panels setup"
• • adjust panel height
  • adjust right column values for
  • • colored icon size - individual value or 0 (==use panel optimal size)
    • symbolic icon size - individual value only 10..50
    • panel text size - individual value only 10..50 or 0 (==use theme defined size)
• tab "global setup"
• • adjust global text scaling
  • select mouse cursor size

Gui setup

Add orcus themes

As most available themes make it hard to spot the active window and window borders, ot-boomer does offer optional frame-window themes for download, which visually highlight the active window and draw a better visible window border.

To integrate with your preferred light- or dark-mode setup, the themes are available in three basic types.

The offered themes support scaling of the minimize-, maximize- and close-buttons based on the titelbar font size (which most other themes do not support at all, or only in an unpleasant way).

You can use ot-boomer to download and add additional orcus metacity window frame themes. At the moment there are 3 basic types of themes offered, coming in 2 flavors (with some larger or smaller gap at the window frame icons):

orcus-2-* themes are using smaller button sizes

• orcus-2-black
• orcus-2-dark
• orcus-2-light

orcus-3-* themes are using larger button sizes

• orcus-3-black
• orcus-3-dark
• orcus-3-light

Window frame setup

[click to enlarge]

Preferred theme

The shown window frame themes are filtered by ot-boomer to the ones, where implicit scaling of the minimize/maximize/close-buttons is supported.

The default linux-mint themes are cleanly detected, where only Mint-X does support a scalable window frame theme.

The general detection of "scaling" themes is far from being perfect, as there exist sadly multiple types/versions of theme-definitions. So - if you did download a theme - you might turn off the filter, to be able to select it for testing anyways.

(1) To select a new window frame theme, you just need to select the according row.

Titlebar font size

(2) If you are using a scalable window frame theme, selecting a different (larger) font-size, does affect the size of the titelbar and the size of the minimize/maximize/close-buttons.

Most "modern" flat themes - like Mint-Y - use a fixed value for the minimize/maximize/close-buttons and do not make use of a larger titlebar.

Sizing area

With higher resolutions it might be hard to catch the window frame borders for resizing windows.

(3) To address this, ot-boomer does allow to use adjust (increase) the resizable area , to make it easier to "catch" a window-borders or -corners for resizing.

Panels layout

The panels options used/described here can be reached using the regular gui-tool of cinnamon too. The options are added to ot-boomer to have them in one place. The main "advantages" editing the options this way are:

• bypass some limiting values of the regular gui
• showing layout options of all sections of multiple panels at the same time

[click to enlarge]

panel height

The shown icon- and text-sizes at the panel are determined by the used panel-heights and current values being used for the different item-types.

Note: There exist some "special" values, which turn on automatic adjustment of according items: sadly the related options are not handled consistently for all available element - just read on.

(1) Following values (value-ranges) affect the panel height

• 0 (zero): auto-adjust panel-height to screen-resolution
• 1 to 19 are ignored - resulting in using 0 (dconf-limit)
• 20 to screen height - height in pixel (do NOT try to use crazy large values like the actual screen-height)

colored icon size

(a), (b), (c) determine the size of the colored icons at the panel. The current panel height does either directly determine the sizes (auto-adjust) or limits the maximum usable value:

• -1 (negative 1): auto-adjust to the current panel-height without any gap around the icons
• 0 (zero): auto-adjust to the current panel-height leaving a gap around the icons
• 1 to panel-height: icon-size in pixel
• > panel-height: will be handled like using 0 = autadjuste with a gap

Note: With newer mint-versions the "grouped window-list" applet is used, which does reside at area a). If you are using an older mint-version, it's predecessor "window list applet", is using area b) of the panel as it's default-location.

Note: Area c) does cover the colored tray panel icons only - read below for the symbolic (black and white style) icons.

main menu icon size

(2) The used icon size value of the main menu icon depends on the current used type of icon there. With a default setup, it will be using a colored icon and thus the the above colored icon size of area a) apply.

If using a symbolic (black and white style) icon for the main-menu (yes - the menu icon can be changed), the symbolic icon size values of area 2) are in effect, the colored icon size values are ignored in this case. With symbolic icon sizes there is no auto-adjust supported and one has to select an explicit value - see (3) for value details.

symbolic icon size

(3) The symbolic icon sizes affect the size of the panel tray icons (the black and white ones). There is no auto-adjust supported:

• 0 to 9: ignored by dconf - the minimum 10 pixel height is used instead
• 10 to 50: icon-size in pixel without applying a gap (additionally limited by the current panel-height)
• >50: will be caped to a maximum value of 50 (additionally limited by the current panel height)

panel text size

(4) At newer mint-versions there will normally only be the calendar (date/time) text visible at the right-section of the panel.

The newer "grouped window list" applet does by default reside at panel section a) and does not show an application title with the button label as default; if the button label option is turn on, the panel text size value of it's containing panel section is used.

The predecessor "window list" applet does reside at panel section b) by default and always displays the current running applications window title; the panel text size value of the containing panel section is used accordingly.

Using a custom icon for the main menu does additionally offer to add a static text next to it, where values for panel section a) apply accordingly.

The available panel text size (ranges) given in points (pt) are:

• 0 (zero): auto-adjust according current theme (with a default setup identical to a value of 10 pt)
• > 0 to < 6: will be ignored by dconf and a minimum value of 6 pt is used instead
• 6 to 16: text size in points (pt)
• > 16: will be ignored by dconf and the maximum value 16 pt is used instead

command line options

To get a list of the available command line options of ot-boomer just run:

python3 <(wget https://www.orcus.de/Entities/linux/ot-boomer.py -O - ) --help

Which will output a current version information and a summary of available options, like this:

demo@lmde-4-cinnamon-64bit-beta:~$ python3 <(wget https://www.orcus.de/Entities/linux/ot-boomer.py -O - 2>/dev/null) --help
ot-boomer (free) alpha V. 001#76 - 2020-05-12
sha256sum: 8785dd5e4f9db2e8975330b10a08207bdfa65c22a9533344a3e2ff332f86c913

about     : Adjust cinnamon gui-options for people with visual limitations.

license   : This software is free for private and non-commercial use only.
Commercial use of this software is prohibited and requires a licensed version.

disclaimer: Use on your own risk - there is no guaranty given, that using
this software does work for the intended purpose, or using this software would
not affect your installed system in some negative way.


parameters:
--help             : display (this) command line help and quit

--accept-disclaimer: bypass disclaimer dialog and run application

--no-window        : to be used with --load or --reset to bypass the
                     main configuration window = just load settings
                     and terminate afterwards

--dl-theme=<theme> : download latest version of an orcus metacity-theme
                     from orcus website to the current directory; basic
                     themes available are:
                     orcus-2-black orcus-2-dark orcus-2-light
                     orcus-3-black orcus-3-dark orcus-3-light

--add-theme=<file> : install metacity theme for visible window borders,
                     a scalable window title including used buttons,
                     distinctable active window and hover-feedback on
                     window frame-buttons
                     for light-themes you could use
                     orcus-2-light.tar.gz orcus-3-light.tar.gz
                     for dark-themes you could use
                     orcus-2-black.tar.gz orcus-2-dark.tar.gz
                     orcus-3-black.tar.gz orcus-3-dark.tar.gz

--dump             : show currently used dconf-values (nothing will be
                     modified) and quit

--save=<file>      : save current settings to the given file

--load=<file>      : load settings from given file and apply them

--restore          : restore the original values of the user setup as
                     being backup'ed on the very first run

--reset            : reset settings to the default-values of a fresh
                     installed linux mint and apply them (all panels)

--set1             : use inbuilt defaults - slightly bigger items
--set2             : use inbuilt defaults - bigger items
--set3             : use inbuilt defaults - big items
--set4             : use inbuilt defaults - huge items

cli samples - common tasks

This sections covers typical use-cases for using ot-boomer from the command line interface (cli).

Skip the disclaimer-dialog and suppress the main-window, to just download a theme, apply a predefined set and add the theme afterwards (to make it the current one):

python3 <(wget https://www.orcus.de/Entities/linux/ot-boomer.py -O - ) \
--accept-disclaimer --no-window --dl-theme=orcus-3-dark --set2 --add-theme=orcus-3-dark.tar.gz

To save your current setup to a user-config:

python3 <(wget https://www.orcus.de/Entities/linux/ot-boomer.py -O - ) \
--accept-disclaimer --no-window --save=user.conf

Which can be reloaded later again:

python3 <(wget https://www.orcus.de/Entities/linux/ot-boomer.py -O - ) \
--accept-disclaimer --no-window --load=user.conf